Today's Memory
by Robin Red R
Summary: They meet (again) on the metro under the bustling streets of Paris. Eren, the student whose vibrant dreams take flight under his paintbrush, and the nameless man with the familiar steel eyes and foul mouth, who won't touch the door without wiping it down first. [Modern!AU. Reincarnation fic.]


_**Warnings: **__Nothing much. Levi being an ass. Eren being a little shit. Some angst. Reincarnation!fic. _

_**Author's Note: **__So I fell in love with this pairing. First step into a new fandom so I apologize for any OOCness, but I did try._

_Also, Levi is French and Eren is German because I am both and why the fuck not. And it's set in Paris, I suppose, because idk. This is where I live, and I wrote this on the metro one morning on my way to class, and that's where 90% of the story is set, so. Hope you enjoy!~_

* * *

**.:: Today's Memory ::.**

The receding taillights of the metro seemed to mock him, as he came to a panting stop on the platform just a few seconds after the train had left the station. Eren cursed violently, stamping his foot as if he were five again and having a temper tantrum, ignoring the disapproving looks of the other passengers. The next metro would bring him to class late though, no matter how fast he ran. He always cut it too short. Mikasa chewed him out about his terrible timing almost once a day.

The next metro came sliding into the station five minutes later, and Eren stormed in angrily. So absorbed was he in his turmoil of thoughts, that he failed to notice some woman's handbag carelessly sprawled across the narrow aisle, and thus ended up pitching ungainly into someone's lap on his way to his usual seat by the window.

"_Scheise!_ Oh fuck, sorry! Pardon!"He tried to apologize in a flurry of languages, scrambling out of the other person's startled bracing as the metro lurched forward.

"Oi, get your filthy paws off of me, shitty brat," snapped a sharp voice, and Eren was suddenly faced with startling steel-grey eyes, a thin mouth curved into a sneer, and a delicately-shaped almost androgynous face.

Eren sat back in his seat.

"You speak English?"

"Ninety percent of this damn city speaks English," the man retorted.

Eren frowned, staring at the stranger in mild fascination and confusion. He'd never seen someone like him before (of that he was sure, that face with the deadpan eyes and alabaster smooth skin would be impossible to forget), but something about him seemed strangely familiar. He glanced curiously at the guy's briefcase, propped up next to his polished boots.

"Are you a student too? I got to Rosa University." Maybe he'd seen him around campus before, or something.

The guy flipped up his newspaper again, placing a physical barrier between himself and Eren. "Do I _look_ like a fucking college kid to you?"

He looked like Eren's exact type, is what he looked like. He also looked translucently pale like he hadn't slept in days, which was marginally worrisome. He also looked adorably short. And… he was also now glaring at Eren over the top of his newspaper.

"Um, well, I mean—"

"One comment about my height and I slit your throat right here." His hand made a move towards his pocket and Eren recoiled immediately into his seat, eyes wide.

The man's gaze focused suddenly on Eren, and there was a flicker in their grey depths that looked almost like recognition. The same kind of strange, misplaced recognition that Eren himself had felt. He wanted to ask 'have we met somewhere before?' but he knew that would just be creepy. He couldn't simply look away though. It felt imperative that he keep this strange man talking.

"How old are you then?" he blurted instead, after the man's eyes had dropped back to his paper.

"Thirty-two."

"Thirty—_what the fuck_?" he exclaimed, his voice pitched embarrassingly high.

The man sighed. "Yes, I am an adult, I do believe that's a term you are familiar with," he retorted drily.

"Shit, no I didn't mean it like that—I mean, god, how can you look so _good _at thirty-two years old?" Whoops; brain-to-mouth filter, entirely nonexistent. The man flipped his newspaper irritably, and Eren flushed. "Besides, I'm an adult too," he continued. "I'm twenty-four."

"There's an adult and then there's an _adult, _shitface. And no, you are not twenty-four."

Eren scowled. "What's it to you?" he retorted heatedly. "At least I'm legal." The man raised an eyebrow. "To drink! God," he added hastily, red staining his cheeks. _What are you doing, Eren. _

"I can't believe I'm actually having this conversation." The guy stood up and tucked his newspaper into his briefcase. Eren stared at the way his impeccable suit hugged his frame, long legs despite his short stature, elegant gloved fingers wrapping around the strap of his briefcase. He also had a militaristic looking undercut, almost like Eren's friend Jean, which somehow fit his curt attitude. Maybe he'd served in the army before, or something.

"Where are you going?" he said in a panic.

"… This is my stop." The man shot him one last look like Eren was a simpleton, and then he'd stepped off the train and onto the platform. Eren noticed how he'd pulled a small handkerchief from his pocket to touch the door with, despite the fact that he was wearing gloves. Odd. Eren watched through the grimy window as he disappeared into the morning crowd, and then flopped bonelessly onto his seat.

He hadn't even caught the handsome stranger's name.

* * *

The next morning, Eren was actually at the station on time. He watched the train pulling in, knowing that if he got on right now he'd actually be on time to his morning lecture. But… if he waited… perhaps…

The doors let out a wailing beep and then slammed shut, Eren still left standing on the platform. He sighed, tucked his hands into his pockets, and proceeded to watch the seconds tick by slowly for the next ten minutes. His heart sped up in anticipation as the next train pulled in.

Yes, _he _was indeed there, in the same spot as yesterday, in an identically pressed and spotless suit, that day's newspaper propped up in his lap as he sipped a coffee. He looked, if possible, even more sleep deprived than the first time Eren had seen him. The brunet couldn't stop the wide grin from spreading over his face as he dropped his bag on the floor and slid into the seat opposite him, sniggering when the older man gave a start.

"So, are you one of those weird people who have their entire days planned out to the millisecond, with a meticulous routine that they'd never break unless the world was ending?" he asked, crossing one leg over the other and trying to look casual.

The man blinked at him, then dropped his gaze back to his paper. "Not even if the world was ending," he replied impassively. The fact that he hadn't ignored Eren and had actually gone along with his stupid joke startled a laugh from the younger.

"I can actually believe that, strangely enough. My name's Eren," he held out a hand invitingly, but the man made a disgusted face so Eren quickly withdrew it again. Oops. He had some charcoal from his sketching last night still smudged on his fingertips.

"You know, when someone introduces themselves it is common courtesy to respond with your own name," he pointed out when the silence had stretched on for a beat too long.

The man scoffed. "I never asked for an introduction, shitty brat. Stop wasting my time and go bother someone else."

"I'm not wasting your time, you're just sitting on the metro."

"I'm _reading _the _newspaper_. Unlike you uncultured brats, I actually care about what's happening in the world."

"I _do_ care! I wouldn't be here if I didn't!" Eren snapped at the unfair allegation. The man's eyes fixed on him with that strange look again, as if he were looking right through Eren's soul and reading all of his secrets in his eyes.

"Be where?"

Eren frowned. He wasn't quite sure why he'd said that, but he'd felt such a strong surge of emotion at the accusation which, now that he thought about it, frankly didn't seem founded at all. Strange.

"I don't know. Never mind."

The man, evidently deeming Eren's company not worth his time, picked up his paper and briefcase and moved to the seat on the opposite side of the train, ignoring the funny looks some of the other passengers sent him.

"Hey!" Eren grabbed his stuff and moved too, unfazed by the death-glare the man was sending his way. "You still haven't told me your name."

"Go away, brat."

"Bob?"

His lip curled into a derogatory sneer. "No."

"Michael?"

"No."

"Are you French?"

"No."

"Yes you are, you have an accent. Paul?"

"No."

"Sébastien?"

"No."

"Guillaume?"

The man slammed his paper shut abruptly. "For fuck's sake, _piss off! _I'll call you in for harassment in a public space."

"Are you a cop?" Eren gasped, eyes wide.

"No."

"Business man?" The man fixed him with a smoldering look. "Writer? Artist? Musician?"

"Eren, I swear to god—"

"Drug dealer!"

The man grabbed his briefcase, violently ripping out his handkerchief, and stepped off the train before it had even stopped moving without another word or look. Eren realized with a start that it was already the guy's stop. Huh. How fast time passed when you were having fun.

* * *

"You know, I'll leave you alone if you just tell me your name. Promise."

"One doesn't just tell random strangers one's name, or didn't your parents teach you anything?" The man rolled his eyes.

Eren smiled. "I'm not a stranger. I talk to you every day and I've practically told you everything about me." The man knew Eren was pursuing an Art major at Rosa, that he loved playing Assassins Creed, Halo, and gorging on junk food in his free time with his best friend, that his favorite colors were blue and white, that he thought instant noodles were simultaneously the best and the worst things ever invented, that he really wanted to own a dog but there was no way he could afford it, and that he thought the man sitting across from him should be getting more sleep because the dark smudges under his eyes were starting to frighten him.

"I wasn't listening, Eren."

Eren leaned in, close enough to smell the minty cologne on the man's clothes. It made him blush excitedly.

"Yes you have. You remembered my name."

* * *

**Message received from Armin at 7:32 am**

_ If you're late another day this week, I'm going to force you to room with me so I can haul you out of bed myself. _

Eren stared at his phone guiltily, then tucked it back into his pocket without replying as the metro came hurtling in.

"Morning, sunshine," he greeted jovially, taking one look at the heavy bags under his new friend's eyes and his haggard expression.

The man groaned. "That, I can assure you, is _not _my name."

Eren grinned. "What on earth do you do that has you up all night like this?"

"Work."

"Yeah, no shit. I mean, what do you do?"

The man grumbled something under his breath, leaning his forehead against the cool window pane. "Damn art students, always so peppy in the morning. Leave me alone." He closed his eyes and promptly seemed to doze off, his face half-turned towards Eren. The latter took the excuse to stare at and memorize his features, the sharp nose, down-turned lips, thick long eyelashes splayed out over his flawless cheekbones…. Seriously… _thirty-two?_

He pulled out his sketchbook surreptitiously.

* * *

Eren's dreams were filled with strange scenes that he could never quite remember when he woke up: blood and screams, darkness, the clash of metal. Snippets of pain. Of joy. Vaguely familiar faces, drenched in blood. His hand pressed to his heart in a fist, back ramrod straight, chanting out invigorating words of encouragement. The wind in his hair as he swung through the trees, high above the ground. The feel of a heavy, warm body above his own, cool lips against his heated skin.

That last one was coming back more and more often as of late, but there was never a face to place with the unknown person who held him tightly in his arms, like Eren would slip away if they let go, crying out as they came together. (Eren couldn't count how many times he'd woken up, drenched in sweat with his boxers sticky and gross, feeling like he was thirteen again and had just discovered porn. How embarrassing.)

But they were just dreams. He always forgot about them by the time he'd finished brushing his teeth.

* * *

"—and then Jean was like, 'I bet you I can put that whole donut in my mouth', and Marco was just smiling and said, cool as fuck, 'my dick is no smaller than that donut and you weren't able to keep _that _in your mouth last night', and so basically that's how they came out in front of the entire cafeteria," Eren was saying, waving his hands around to tell his story, oblivious to the increasingly frustrated expression on the older male's face. "You should have seen Jean's face though, I was laughing so hard I nearly snorted up my pasta – which, by the way, has actually happened before and I can tell you it's the strangest feeling ever—"

The man made a disgusted grimace and looked like he was about to be sick, but Eren only smiled to himself and continued. Except, his phone rang at that moment and he paused, glancing at the caller ID. Oh shit. He ended the call without picking up, but half a second later it rang again. Sighing, he answered the second time, knowing he'd only get hell later for ignoring it.

"EREN JAEGER, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU."

He yelped and nearly threw the phone across the train, his ears still ringing from the painful vocal assault. He brought it back gingerly to his ear.

"Jesus Christ, Mikasa, I think you just gave me permanent ear damage." He glanced up briefly, only to find the man's eyes trained on him curiously.

"_Good. _You realize you have been late to class every single day for the last three weeks? I don't know what is going on; this isn't like you, Eren. I haven't seen you on campus in ages and you know I don't have time to come home." Her voice softened then. "You know if something's going on you can tell Armin or me… Where are you now?"

"Um. On the metro…"

"Eren, I talked to mom, and she says you leave on time every day, so there's no reason—"

"_You talked to mom!?"_ Eren exclaimed, horrified. "Mikasa you _can't, _she will cut my ears off or something if she finds out I'm missing classes…"

"Why _are _you missing classes?"

Eren desperately fished in his mind for an excuse. Nope. Blank.

Go with the truth. Sort of. "Uh. I… met a guy?"

A long silence.

"Oh. I see." Mikasa's entire voice quality had changed.

"What, no, it's not like that!" He stared in a panic at the man opposite him, then quickly flicked his gaze away.

"Eren—"

"Gotta go, this is my stop, bye!" He hung up the phone and slumped in his seat. The man's lips twitched in an almost-smile.

"Girlfriend?"

"Worse; _sister_. Sister who thinks she's my mom."

The man folded his newspaper pristinely and tucked it into his briefcase. "You're missing class… because of _this?_" He sounded bemused, and he didn't quite meet Eren's eye.

"Who said I was even talking about you?" Eren snapped, blushing.

The man huffed a breath. "Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out, shitty brat. You spew out all kinds of filth about your shitty college student life that I don't need to know, and I can't help but notice the same few recurring names have cropped up."

"What's that supposed to mean? I _have_ friends!" Eren cried indignantly. The man stood up as the train began to slow for his stop.

"Take the earlier train tomorrow, brat." He ruffled Eren's hair as he passed with an odd familiarity, and then he was gone, like every time. Eren watched his receding back, wondering where it was that he went every morning. Oh, how he wished he knew more about him. He'd tried so hard to get past this man's barriers, but his results so far were a long way from satisfactory.

* * *

The man was indeed on the earlier train the next morning, and thus Eren arrived at school on time for once. He couldn't stop from grinning the entire day. From the guy who said he wouldn't change his routine even if the world was ending—_hah!_

* * *

Eren caught him scribbling on some papers one morning, but all he got was a quick view of perfectly shaped and precise handwriting, before the papers were hastily put away. He recognized one of the papers as a printed letter addressed to a Monsieur-something or other, a word with four or five letters beginning with an L. Presumably the man's name. Eren decided, impulsively, to call him 'Corporal L' in his mind, because of the militaristic haircut and it just seemed to fit. Go figure?

"So… some kind of office job, then? That lasts till three in the morning?"

The man quirked a lip. "Something like that."

"Lemme guess… it's also big and rich and famous?" Those suits probably cost more than Eren's entire wardrobe, after all. The guy's _shoe _was probably worth more than Eren's entire person.

The man sighed and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes wearily. "Mm. My paycheck has a lot of zeroes on it."

_Aha, _Eren thought. _Progress! _While he tried to find a way to smoothly formulate his next question, the other man seemed to finally take pity on him.

"I work in management at the Musée d'Orsay, if you really must know. That's the only reason why I have the slightest bit of tolerance for a shitty brat like you." He nodded towards Eren's sketchbook.

The brunet blinked. The Musée d'Orsay was one of the most well-known art museums in all of Europe. Wow.

"Hah… only the slightest bit of tolerance? I like to think you've grown a bit fond of me," Eren replied coquettishly.

"Keep dreaming, brat. They rarely ever do come true."

And Eren was suddenly reminded of his particularly graphic dream last night and how he'd woken up wishing for nothing more than for it to really be true, and he blushed so hard he had to hide behind a blank page of his sketchbook. All much to the Corporal's evident confusion, who didn't know what about their menial small talk could possibly have flustered Eren so much.

**x-x-x**

Eren stepped into the train one morning and froze, seeing the Corporal sporting a nasty looking black-eye and a bandage around his knuckles, minus the ever-present gloves. He looked perfectly nonchalant as Eren cautiously took his usual seat across from him.

"Uh. You gonna tell me what happened?"

The man flipped to a new page of his newspaper.

"I walked into a door," he said flippantly. "Didn't I ever tell you, clumsiness is my worst trait."

Eren scoffed loudly. "There's one thing you will never be, and that's _clumsy, _Corporal. Who are you kidding? Out of all of us you were always the most graceful and skilled."

The man dropped his paper abruptly, staring at Eren with the most emotion he'd ever seen from him at one go.

"What?" Eren asked worriedly, slightly unnerved by the man's unblinking stare.

He leaned forward suddenly, the newspaper slipping from his lap as his fist closed around Eren's shirt. "Do you _remember?"_he demanded quietly, voice earnest, eyes burning. "Tell me you remember. Just say that you do."

Eren shrunk into his seat, confused by the sudden, inexplicable break in character. His eyes flickered to the man's lips, which were so close now, then back to his eyes. "R-remember what?"

The man's face fell minutely and he dropped his gaze to his lap, pulling away guiltily as if he suddenly remembered they were in public and forcefully grabbing someone's shirt wasn't usual social convention.

"I'm sorry, what did I say wrong? What am I supposed to remember?" He fiddled with his zipper, because the barely-concealed pain in the Corporal's eyes cut him to the bone, and he didn't understand what he'd done to put that expression there, only knew that he wished he had a way to make him smile again.

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it." He didn't say another word for the rest of the trip, and Eren sat in miserable silence across from him, staring at the bruise on his friend's eye and… wondering.

* * *

That night, Eren sketched a pair of stylized, crossed wings on his blank canvas, spattered with blood, and he couldn't stop the tears from rolling down his face even though he had no idea why he was crying.

_We'll find each other again, Corporal. You promised me we'd go to see the ocean together one day._

* * *

Eren was on a creative spiral. His room looked like a bomb had exploded in its midst; crumpled papers and sketches strewn all over the place, oils stacked on textbooks, open bottles of turpentine perched precariously on his bedside table. It was nearly time for his final art assignment, and Eren had too many ideas swirling in his head to choose from. Most of them depicted some kind of war zone, gruesome scenes of half-eaten bodies that made his mother back out of his room with a green face, or huge skinless creatures with massive, steaming jaws, but some of them were beautiful too. A tranquil forest scene, a starlit sky, the glimmer of the ocean through the trees. Figures gathered around a campfire, their weapons unloaded and polished, not stained with fresh blood.

He had no idea where the images came from, only that they appeared crystal-clear in his mind and he was compelled to draw them as quickly as they came.

* * *

"Hey Mutti, do you believe in reincarnation?"

His mother paused, halfway between ladling Eren's bowl with potatoes and stew for dinner.

"What do you mean, 'reincarnation'?"

Eren picked absently at his food. "Just that… sometimes it feels like there's a whole other life inside my head, you know, and I catch glimpses of it sometimes…"

"Ah, your dreams?" Carla asked.

Eren sighed, then shrugged it off, sending her a quick smile. "Never mind, I probably just haven't been sleeping enough," he dismissed.

_Sometimes they feel like memories, though. _

* * *

Eren was oddly quiet the next morning, staring out of the window contemplatively. The man sipped his coffee, watching him over the edge of his paper like he usually did. Suddenly he tugged off one leather glove, pulled a pen from his pocket, and began doodling something on a free corner of his newspaper, his hand movements sharp and precise like everything about him was.

He pushed the paper towards Eren.

"See that, brat?"

Eren glanced at the paper, then sat up ramrod straight, snatching it from the man's grip.

"Where have you seen that before?" he hissed in a whisper, eyes fixed on the image the Corporal had drawn.

The man chuckled humorlessly. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"But… but I _drew _this! A few weeks ago… I've never seen it before then. How did you know? Where have you seen it?" He let his fingers trace over the two overlapping wings, the exact same design he still had on the canvas propped against his closet door.

The Corporal crossed his arms, eyes glittering. "Do you have your sketchbook?"

"I… what? No, tell me where you've seen this before."

"I don't take orders from brats. Show me your sketchbook."

Eren frowned but complied, handing the Corporal his most prized possession in a bit of a daze. He watched with mild trepidation as the older flipped through the pages, face carefully bored and impassive. He paused at one, and his fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on the corner of the page.

Eren glanced over to see that it was an old concept sketch of the painting he'd just finished that very morning; one of those skinless monsters from his dreams peering over a tall wall, with the sunset at its back.

"I have some of those finished at my house, if you'd like to see…" he suggested hopefully. The Corporal didn't reply.

He turned to a new page and chuckled suddenly, sending a trickle of dread to the pit of Eren's stomach. "Ah… I'm not sure I have quite as many muscles these days, but I'm glad someone still thinks so. I'm definitively showing this to Hanji the next time she complains about my lack of exercise."

Eren looked down quickly at the page and blushed so hard he could hear the blood rushing in his ears; he tried to wrench the sketchbook from the other man's grasp, but he was far too slow.

"Hey, don't look at that!" He knew the next few pages were only filled with more sketches of the Corporal himself; face, hands, eyes, mouth… and all mostly shirtless too. Dammit, please…

He was stopped in his tracks though when a foreign sound touched his ears: the man's laughter. He'd barely seen him so much as crack a smile, but now his eyes crinkled at the corners and he suddenly looked much younger, brighter.

"Stop it," Eren grumbled without much heat. "I draw pictures of my friends all the time, it doesn't mean anything."

"Mhm… pictures like these?" The Corporal's voice had dipped to a lower octave, as he flipped the sketchbook around for Eren to see. The boy squeaked and snatched the book away, successfully this time. Oh god. Fuck fuck _fuck. How_ had he forgotten he'd drawn that? The man from his dreams, who incidentally resembled the Corporal more and more every night, tied up with leather straps across his chest and legs to a bedpost, arms above his head and looking at the viewer through his thick eyelashes. Frankly, Eren thought he'd done a pretty good job – dark shading so that his piercing grey eyes stood out from his face, ribs and hipbones as smooth and sharp as he imagined they'd be… yum… - but he was so fucking screwed now that the object of his fantasies had seen it too.

He'd probably think Eren was some kind of pervert.

The boy sat curled protectively around his book, still blushing like a virgin, the Corporal's eyes trained on him curiously.

"Oh my god. _Verfluchte Skizzen._ I hate myself so much right now."

The Corporal smirked again as he stood up for his stop. "What time are you at this station after school?"

"Um…" His heart beat wildly in his chest. "Around 17h30?"

"Good. I think I'd like to see those finished paintings after all." Eren sat there, frozen, as the man brushed his fingers lightly over Eren's shoulder's as he passed, and the heat from that single touch burned into his skin for the remainder of the day.

* * *

The Corporal was waiting for him at the station, briefcase in one hand, phone in the other. He looked pissed, but his features relaxed slightly as he sat down in front of Eren.

"Bad day at work?"

"My boss is being a dickhead. Nothing out of the ordinary." He ran his fingers through his black hair.

Eren sat there awkwardly in his seat, not knowing what to say. It seemed so strange, after seeing this guy infallibly every single morning for over two months, to suddenly see him there on the way _back _home, too. It threw Eren off more than he liked to admit. And also, he was desperately trying to remember what embarrassing things he still had lying around his room from this morning.

"So you live with your mother, right?"

"Mhm. Mikasa, my sister, got a scholarship to our university which covered the dorm room, but we didn't get enough financial aid for me to go as well, so I just commute. It's only forty-five minutes."

The man nodded, but Eren bristled. "What? Not everyone is some rich-ass guy like you."

"I didn't mean any judgment by that, shitty brat. It's good that you still have… I mean, not everyone is close to their parents this long."

Eren leant his head back against the seat. "You?"

"Mm. I ran away from home when I was fifteen so, no, not really."

Eren looked down at his lap, frowning, and they sat together quietly for the rest of the trip.

There was a note from his mother tacked to the front door, Eren noticed as he was fishing out his keys, saying that she would be home late because of a meeting at work, and Eren thanked the stars for this turn in his favor.

He wouldn't have known what to say had his mother been there…. 'Yes, good afternoon Mutti, I'm bringing home this guy who I talk to on the metro… no I don't know his name or even anything about him, but he wants to see my art and he's really fucking hot, okay?' That would have gone over fantastically.

He pushed open the door and walked in, tossing his bag on the couch haphazardly and toeing off his shoes. The man did the same, stacking them neatly in the corner by the door.

"Um. Do you want something to drink?" he asked nervously, watching as the Corporal glanced about the small room, eyes lingering on the photos of Eren, Armin, Mikasa and his mother which decorated the wall, all taken during various stages of their lives.

"I'm fine." He pulled off his gloves slowly.

"Okay well, my room's upstairs…" He led the way, taking two steps at a time. "Warning; you might hate it, what with the whole clean-freak stuff… uh… You see, my final assignment is due next week, so the last few days have been a bit of a mess…"

"Just get on with it," the man snorted, rolling his eyes.

Eren swallowed and pushed open his door, debating whether he should tell the Corporal to say outside for a minute while he tidied up a bit, but then it was too late and they were both suddenly standing in Eren's room. The younger winced, noticing three days' worth of old clothes and dirty underwear strewn on the floor, half-covered by pages of messy scribbles and garish colors and _wow, _the whole thing looked like someone had let a three-year-old loose with a bucket of paint. Except, of course, for the finished oil paintings propped against his wall, still drying from last night.

Eren watched from the doorway as the man made his way over to them, stepping carefully around the dubious looking things which littered the floor, and crouched down to admire them. Or, at least Eren hoped he was admiring. It was always a bit impossible to tell which shade of 'bored' the man was wearing at any given time.

He stared long and hard at Eren's most gruesome edition, then touched the frame lightly. His fingers came back stained with red paint that looked sickeningly like blood.

"Oh shit, yeah, they're not dry yet." Eren scrambled to find a clean cloth. "Oil takes two-thousand years to dry, I'm not kidding… Here…" He took the man's hand and wiped the paint off as best he could. Some of these were probably toxic anyway.

"Tch. These are… not bad, Eren," he said quietly, eyes still fixed on one of his paintings, seeming not to notice Eren practically holding his hand. The younger flushed.

"Oh. Thanks…"

"You sure have a violent imagination though," he added, and his voice sounded oddly ironic.

"There are some pretty ones too… like that one." Eren pointed to the one of a group of people gathered around a bonfire. "And here, this is the design I told you about, see it's the same one you drew this morning."

"Die Flügel der Freiheit."

"What? You speak German too?"

"No. Eren…"

"Yeah?"

The man turned to look at him, and his eyes were dark and sad. "What would you say if I told you all of these scenes you've drawn, they're all true? That they've already happened once before, in a different time?"

Eren froze, and the room suddenly felt too small, too confining for the two of them, his head starting to pound. He swallowed thickly, overcome with a nauseating sense of claustrophobia.

"… I'd say you were crazy and ask you to leave my house," he replied in a monotone. The Corporal didn't drop his gaze.

"Ah…"

Eren stared at him, at his familiar grey eyes, the only things keeping him grounded as his head began to spin. Maybe _he _was the crazy one here. Maybe he was dreaming all of this, some crazy delusion his fucked up mind had come up with.

As if in a trance, he lifted his hand still holding the white cloth, and slipped it around the other man's neck, stepping close to tie it in a loose knot so that the end rested against his chest. He stared at the fabric in his hands, aware that he was standing far too close for it to be socially acceptable, far too intimate a touch, but then again _he _wasn't pushing Eren away either. Eren's breath caught in his throat suddenly and he stepped back, turning to fling open his closet. He pulled down a small painting he'd finished a few weeks ago and hidden away beneath a scarf in case his mother ever found it…

He pulled off the scarf now and held the painting in front of his chest, showing it shamelessly to his guest.

"And this one? Has this one happened too?"

He could have sworn he saw a subtle blush dust across the man's pale cheeks, and something flickered in his dark eyes that made Eren's stomach jump.

"Yes… That one happened too."

Eren pointed to one of the two men in the painting, though both their faces were obscured by shadows, limbs tangled and twined and naked bodies pressed so closely together it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

"That's you, isn't it?"

The older man touched his fingers lightly to the handkerchief still tied around his neck. "I don't know, Jaeger, _you're_ the one who drew it."

Eren narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "I also know that I've never told you my last name."

"I read it on your textbooks."

"Most of them are Armin's so no, I don't have my name written on them."

"Mailbox, then."

"We don't _have _one. How do you know me?" Eren stepped closer, dropping the canvas. "_Who _are you?"

They were interrupted by the sudden sound of the front door slamming shut, and then footsteps and voices ascending the stairs. (Eren didn't notice how his hands immediately slid to his waist, as if to grasp for weapons that weren't there.)

"Eren! It's us," came Mikasa's familiar voice, joined by Armin's muffled laughter.

Fuck. Eren stared at the other man, but it was too late to try and hide him.

"Wait! Don't come in yet, just a minute!" He scrambled to hide his painting in the closet again, while the Corporal just stood quietly in the middle of the room, watching him.

"Eren, you've been living like a recluse for the last few weeks and I know what you get like when you're in one of your creative moods. We're here to make sure you're still alive and functioning." God, _why _did Armin have to be such a best friend sometimes?

He stumbled his way to the door, opening it a crack. "Go away, you're not my mother! This is really not a good time for me."

"We came all the way from campus," answered Mikasa. "You could at least pretend to be happy to see us."

"No, no, like you do not understand, this is _really _not a good ti—"

He yelped as Mikasa kicked the door open and he was thrown violently on his ass. Ow.

"What have you got in here that you can't let us—" she broke off in a gasp, eyes wide. Armin followed her in, turning to stare at the older man in shocked confusion in his turn.

"Um. Yes. See, this is a bit hard to explain." Eren bit his lip.

The Corporal snorted, pulling off the handkerchief and tossing it back at Eren's face. "I'll just be going now, save you the trouble of explaining. One brat like you is bad enough; I don't want to have to deal with three." He pushed past Mikasa and Armin, who parted before him silently.

"Wait! Don't—"

"Corporal," Mikasa said quietly, dipping her head respectfully, though her eyes blazed with some unknown emotion. The man stopped, fixing her with his deadpan look.

He inclined his head in turn, lips twitching upward just slightly. "Ackerman."

"_What?! _How—Do… Do you two _know each other?!" _

"Remember my name, Eren, and then come for me. I'll see you tomorrow." Eren stared in incomprehension as the man slowly stepped out of his bedroom and descended the stairs, the sickening feeling of claustrophobia rising up on either side of Eren yet again.

He could hear nothing but the soft pat-pat-pat as the man's footsteps receded into the distance, back out of Eren's life, the same way he'd always disappear into the crowd after he stepped off the metro every goddamn day like he was just a figment of Eren's imagination. No. Mikasa had seen him too, he was real. He _was_ real, and maybe everything in Eren's mind was real too, if he could just _think _for a minute, just think clearly because right now his head was spinning so much and maybe he just needed to sit on the ground and _breathe_, maybe everything would calm down and he could make sense of things again, because literally nothing did right now, and oh my god, oh my _god_, what was _going on—_

"_Levi," _he breathed, the mess in his head righting itself with a sudden, sickening lurch. Levi. Holy shit.

He tore down the stairs, nearly sending Armin flying, and wrenched open the front door. Levi had barely crossed the door mat by this point, and the momentum with which Eren threw himself out of the house made him crash headlong into the other man, sending them both tumbling to the ground and skidding on the wet grass.

"What the—Eren!" Levi glared at him, spitting out dust angrily. "This was a fucking expensive suit! Tch, disgusting. I fully expect you to pay for the cleaning bill on this." He tried to shove Eren off of himself, but the younger man planted himself securely on Levi's chest, a wide grin splitting his face. He reached forward and tucked the handkerchief around Levi's neck again, his movements jerky and barely controlled.

"You always looked better with this on, Corporal," Eren said over Levi's curses, and that effectively shut him up. He stared up at Eren with tentative hope beginning to grow in his cool grey eyes.

"Ah… Did I now?"

"Yes. My favorite part was usually taking it off, though," he snickered, but the smile on his face was too bright and glowing for him to sound seductive right now. He didn't care. That could come later.

Levi's face softened just fractionally, and he reached up to touch Eren's cheek, his elegant fingers tracing Eren's features silently. Eren leaned into the touch, and then dropped his head onto Levi's chest, overcome with emotion.

"Levi. Levi." He needed to hear that name again, needed to hear it spilling out from his own lips like a mantra, after all this time. "God, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I forgot, I forgot our promise, I must have made you suffer so much all these days…"

"I'm booking us a hotel by the beach this weekend," Levi said quietly, touching his fingers to Eren's lips to halt his flow of words. Eren stared at him for a moment, and made a broken kind of sound in his throat; he crashed their lips together roughly, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. He did a little bit of both, probably. Oh, how he had _missed _this. He'd missed this so much and he'd never known, all his life, what it was he'd been missing. It was the most wonderful feeling the world to feel Levi's hands tighten around his waist and have him kiss back, their lips moving together with practiced ease as their combined memories washed over them like the tide.

It was far too much to handle at one go, but Eren could focus on one thing at least, the one constant in all this mess. Levi was back in his life, and Eren had finally remembered his crucial place in it.

Mikasa and Armin stood quietly by the open front door, watching them.

"Well. It's about time he remembered… It's been driving me crazy watching him draw all these things, you know." Armin tucked a strand of hair behind his ear.

"I didn't know _you _knew."

Armin glanced at her. "I'm pretty sure Eren was the last one of us all." Mikasa cracked a small smile at that, averting her eyes from the scene in the garden and motioning Armin back into the house to leave Eren and Levi some privacy. Hopefully the neighbors wouldn't see.

"That doesn't surprise me. He's always been a little… thickheaded."

"_What?!" _They heard Eren's sudden outraged shout from outside. "I am _not_ paying for your damn suit! After all that, and all you can do is complain about how dirty the grass is?! Fuck you! Why do I even love you?!"

Armin shut the door and laughed hard at Mikasa's carefully displeased expression.

"Yeah. Some things, fortunately, will never change."

**- fin. x**


End file.
